On the 24th of March, 1656, at Port-Royal Abbey in Paris, a young woman named Marguerite Perrier who boarded with the nuns there, knelt to kiss a relic that had recently been given to the abbey. It was a thorn claimed to be from the crown of thorns forced onto Christ’s head. Now young Marguerite Perrier had long suffered from an ulcerous sore in the corner of her eye, something the doctors called a lachrymal fistula, which caused her face to swell and a terrible smelling discharge to come from her eye and nostril. In kneeling to kiss this Holy Thorn, hopeful that this relic of Christ might do for her what medicine never could, she allowed the thorn to touch her disfiguring sore. Thereafter, Perrier claimed that she had been healed of her malady, and her claims were later upheld by doctors. This, in addition to a number of other cures associated with the Holy Thorn, resulted in an official recognition of the miracle and the relic by the Catholic Church, but also in great disagreement over what the miracle meant. Port-Royal Abbey was a stronghold of adherents to a Catholic sect known as Jansenists who had caused something of a doctrinal schism in the church. Indeed, young Marguerite Perrier’s uncle was Blaise Pascal, a Jansenist theologian who just three months before his niece’s supposed miracle had written a denunciation of the Jesuits, a principal enemy of the Jansenists. So, while the Jansenists viewed the Holy Thorn miracles as proof that God was on their side, the Jesuits and other enemies of Jansenism in the church argued that such a miracle could have happened anywhere the Holy Thorn might have been and testified only to the relic’s power, or alternatively suggested that God only sent miracles to intercede because of rampant sin, suggesting the Holy Thorn miracles occurred at Port-Royal because the Jansenists there were flirting with heresy. The Holy Thorn miracles would not be the only supposed supernatural phenomena associated with Jansenism to occur in Enlightenment France, and just as at Port-Royal, the way that these supposedly miraculous happenings were rationalized by skeptics and believers alike to support conflicting sides of ongoing ecclesiastical and political struggles offers fascinating insight into the significance of wonder-working in the popular and modern mind.

In France, decades before the famous Holy Thorn miracles at Port-Royal, René Descartes commenced a career in philosophy that many consider the beginning of modern thought, and half a century after those miraculous healings, in the early 1700s, philosophes like Diderot, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire would make France the epicenter of the High Enlightenment. And yet, at the very same time, amid this burgeoning modernity, the great awakening of logic and rational thought, a tumultuous conflict of fanaticism and mania and widespread claims of unexplainable prodigies threatened to drag France back to a darker age. These claims of the supernatural were raised in cults that worshiped magicians, but in a completely different sense than one might imagine today upon hearing those words. Rather than magician, the more appropriate word would be thaumaturge, from the Greek meaning worker of marvels or wonders. And when I say cult, I mean it in the oldest sense of the word, with roots in pre-Christian paganism, as a group that practices the veneration of one of these wonderworkers. In antiquity, these might have been living miracle workers, but as Christian traditions became established throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the church managed to keep them focused more on the dead, venerating martyrs and saints at their tombs. But just because they were dead did not mean these thaumaturges could not work their wonders. Indeed, as I mentioned in my last new episode on Joseph of Cupertino, the posthumous working of miracles, typically healings, used to be a central requirement of canonization. So it was that the tombs of holy men were sometimes haunted by pilgrims not only paying homage but testing the waters to see if perhaps a miracle might occur, indicating they had a saint on their hands. These weren’t just any dead clerics, but rather those who were suspected to have died “in the odor of sanctity,” meaning in a state of grace and without sin, and sometimes more literally meaning that an actual smell emanated from their corpses, sometimes because of the stigmata, or wounds corresponding to Christ’s that were said to appear on the bodies of some saints. In early 18th century France, as with the Holy Thorn miracles, an unusual number of these cults sprang up around Jansenist figures, thereby further stirring the doctrinal disputes surrounding the group, and eventually leading to the most bizarre string of miracles in history, a dramatic conflict between church and state, and an upheaval of religious persecution and defiance of secular authority that contributed to the French Revolution.

Portrait of Marguerite Perrier kneeling before the Holy Thorn at Port-Royal Abbey, via Wikimedia Commons

In order to lay the groundwork for all the fantastical claims that would unfold in 18th century Paris, we must understand one of the most complicated doctrinal disputes of all time: the conflict between the Jansenists and the rest of the church, which began long before the Holy Thorn miracles and evolved through various subsequent ecclesiastical clashes. It arose during the counter-reformation, the revival of the Gallican or French Catholic Church in the early 1600s, among theologians and dogmatists, and can be seen as a reaction to or criticism of Jesuit theology, thus the Jesuit attack on Port-Royal and its Holy Thorn miracles. The name for this school of thought in Catholicism was taken from a Dutch theologian, Cornelius Jansen, whose deathbed treatise on the teachings of St. Augustine emphasized certain beliefs about original sin, grace, contrition, and predestination that did not conform to Christian doctrine as established at the Council of Trent. But more than that, the Jansenist movement represented a challenge to church authority and a democratizing influence in religion, for Jansenists believed that even the lay people should have some better understanding of doctrine and their salvation, whereas the church had always kept such theological finer points to themselves as the specialized knowledge that was their privilege. First Cardinal Richelieu, the powerful French statesman and clerical authority, and then his successor Cardinal Mazarin both waged a war of persecution on Jansenist clergy, locking them up and suppressing their views. As leading figures like Antoine Arnauld, writing from Port-Royal, defended their doctrines, they saw themselves condemned over and over by Pope Urban VIII, Pope Pius V, Pope Gregory XIII, and Pope Innocent X, who promulgated a constitution denying certain tenets of Jansenism. This resulted in the French church attempting to bring the Jansenists to heel by asking them to sign a Formula of Submission. Jansenists refused, deepening this schism. This was the context in which the miracle of the Holy Thorn took place and was, not surprisingly, promptly politicized. But it wouldn’t be the end of this controversy, or the last miraculous sign that had to be interpreted by both sides of the conflict.

After this Formulary Controversy, in which Jansenists refused to submit, the group found themselves at odds with both the church and the state, for King Louis XIV had been convinced that the Jansenists’ real crime was a denial of the church’s infallibility, which in turn was tantamount to defiance of his own authority as protector of the Gallican Church. The de facto leader of the Jansenists after Antoine Arnauld’s death, Pasquier Quesnel, ended up imprisoned for a time and then on the run in Amsterdam, and Louis XIV demanded that Pope Clement XI take action against Quesnel and his writings. In response, another apostolic constitution was promulgated, Unigenitus Dei Filius, which condemned 101 of Quesnel’s propositions as heretical, deepening the schism and cementing the factions into two camps, the so-called constitutionnaires who supported Unigenitus and the unrepentant Jansenist anticonstitutionnaires. Amidst all of this furor, Jansenists continually looked to miracles as proof that God was on their side. It had worked with the Holy Thorn, so why not again? Whenever some worthy Jansenist abbé or bishop expired, some miraculous healing or another was said to have transpired at their tombs. None of these ever truly took hold of the public imagination as had the Holy Thorn, however, and perhaps it was because the claims had come from among the circle of Jansenist insiders at Port-Royal, making them suspect. However, in 1725, a more public miracle claimed by a cabinetmaker’s wife gave them something stronger to tout. Madame Lafosse was her name, and while walking in the procession of the Holy Sacrament at the parish of Sainte-Marguerite in Paris, she claimed to be cured of a hemorrhaging condition and a partial paralysis that had long afflicted her. This miracle was authenticated by the church and said to be proof of Christ’s Real Presence in the sacrament—in other words, their wafers and wine must truly be Christ’s flesh and blood to have effected such a cure. But soon the Jansenists claimed the miracle as proof of God’s sympathy with their cause because the priest who had blessed this particular sacrament, it turned out, was an anticonstitutionnaire.

Pope Clement XI enthroned while portraits of Jansen and Quesnel are trampled and destroyed before him, via Wikimedia Commons

While this debate over the significance of Madame Lafosse’s healing raged on, numerous other miraculous cures began to be reported, all connected to the Jansenists in some way. Some miracles came from a certain church in the hands of Jansenist canons, while others were attributed to relics that had belonged to Father Pasquier Quesnel. Several were cured of afflictions at the tomb of a little known Jansenist priest named Sauvage. Also, a canon in the abbey of Avenay named Gérard Rousse passed away in the odor of sanctity yet because of his opposition to the papal bull Unigenitus had been denied last sacraments and burial on sacred ground; nevertheless, two people claimed to be miraculously healed at his burial place. These Jansenist thaumaturges were not just posthumous wonderworkers either. In early 1727, a Jansenist Archbishop Barchman gave his benediction to a woman in Amsterdam who, according to 170 witnesses, was thereafter healed of several maladies that doctors had deemed incurable, and a couple months later in Lyon, an anticonstitutionnaire father named Celoron was said to have restored the sight of a 3-year-old who had been blinded by smallpox. These miracles tended to draw only limited interest, however, and in some cases, such as Rousse’s, authorities in the church actually forbade pilgrimages to the tombs of Jansenists who appeared to be gathering a cult, thereby keeping any of these miracles from gaining the fame that would have really marshalled support to the anticonstitutionnaire cause. They would not be so successful, however, in trying to suppress the cult of another Jansenist thaumaturge: François de Pâris, whose posthumous miracles would finally bring the renown that Jansenists needed, but whose cult would eventually become something far different than expected, in the end doing more harm than good to the Jansenist cause.

Most of what we know about the priest with the exceedingly French name François de Pâris comes to us from biography written after the emergence of his cult and so may be less trustworthy than we would like. It’s said that he came from a background of wealth, with his father involved in politics, but that he had been drawn to a life of piety at a young age. His family actually discouraged this, intending for their son to study law, which he did as a dutiful son before eventually joining the clergy regardless of the wishes of his family, who in retaliation partially disinherited him. At seminary, he was influenced by Jansenist theologians and developed a strong anticonstitutionnaire stance on the controversy over Unigenitus. Taking to heart the Jansenist teachings on austerity and charity, he took what was left of his inheritance and gave it to clothe the poor. Known to embody the meekness and asceticism espoused by Jansenists, he refused to be made a deacon because he felt himself too sinful and thus unworthy of the office, and instead chose to live out his days in squalid poverty and isolation, believing that his own suffering was done in penitence for the church at large, which had fallen into sin because of Unigenitus. He chose the poor Paris suburb of Saint-Marceau to seclude himself, and when not in isolation in his gloomy, unfurnished living quarters, he became well known in his community for giving away the woolen stockings he made and for cleaning the neglected streets. Thus he already had something of a saintly reputation when, in May 1727, due to declining health brought on by his fasting and physical mortifications, he died, the last words on his lips, supposedly, being a reiteration of his opposition to the papal bull Unigenitus. Almost immediately the beginnings of a cult could be observed as crowds of common folk came to see him in his simple coffin, wanting to press their rosaries to his corpse in order to imbue them with his sanctity or to cut off some relic such as a lock of his hair or even a fingernail. Some claimed that he did not appear to be dead, but rather retained the color of vitality in his face.

Portrait of François de Pâris, via Wikimedia Commons

In attendance on the day François de Pâris was buried in a little cemetery in the churchyard of Saint-Médard was an elderly widow whose arm had been paralyzed for 20 years. After kissing the feet of his corpse and praying for his intercession, she was immediately healed! Or so she claimed, six year later. However, certainly some miracle like the one this widow claimed to have received must have been rumored, for soon many afflicted people began traveling to François de Pâris’s graveside to pray for a miracle cure or take some relic for themselves. Within a year, he was no longer in a modest grave but rather entombed at Saint-Médard, in a black marble slab raised on stone pillars high enough for pilgrims to prostrate themselves and crawl beneath him. During summer the next year, after a dozen or so claimed miracles, the church began investigations for the canonization process. Especially convincing, it seemed, were the healings of Pierre Lero, whose ulcerated leg had troubled him more than a year; Marie-Jeanne Orget, who had been afflicted with a skin condition on her legs for thirty years; Elizabeth Loe, who had been dealing with a swollen breast for a year and a half; and Marie-Madeleine Mossaron, whose left side was paralyzed and whose other side suffered frequent convulsions. Although the bishop in charge of the investigations was inclined to declare the miracles authentic and thus to canonize de Pâris, the royal government, aware that this would become fodder for the Jansenists, pulled rank and made sure that de Pâris would never be consecrated a saint. This had little effect on the increasing numbers of pilgrims to his tomb, however, for most of the sick and devout visitors to François de Pâris’s resting place had little understanding of the ecclesiastical political turmoil roiling in the background. Eventually, however, the constitutionnaire forces who were troubled by the growing cult at Saint-Médard would take further action to quash their worship of this thaumaturge, and the supposed miracles of François de Pâris would be further politicized.

It took a while, but in the spring of 1731, just as church officials had feared, Jansenists began to exploit the ongoing miracles among the cult of François de Pâris at the Saint-Médard cemetery as proofs of the righteousness of the anticonstitutionnaire position. In the last couple of years, as the Saint-Médard cult was growing, the government had increased its efforts to impose the Unigenitus Bull by making it not only a judgment on Church dogma but also a binding law of the State, a maneuver many thought would finally stamp out Jansenist thought. However, magistrates in the sovereign court, many of whom had Jansenist leanings, objected to this royal declaration and frustrated its enforcement. Thus we already see how the political turmoil caused by this controversy may have helped place France on the path to revolution. Despite uncertainty over the validity of the royal decree in the court and pushback among magistrates, within the Church, it was treated as a mandate, and Cardinal Fleury, chief minister of Louis XV, as well as Archbishop Vintimille of Paris, began to purge the church of any parish priests they suspected of being Jansensists. One day, angered by the suspension of her priest, a woman by the name of Anne Lefranc traveled to Saint-Médard to pray for the intercession of François de Pâris. This old spinster had been partially paralyzed and blind in one eye for almost thirty years, a condition that doctors had called incurable, and she hoped that this thaumaturge’s powers could heal her, not so much because she desired to be healed but rather, as she explained it, so that she might “make manifest the justice of the cause of her legitimate pastor.” Within a few days of her visit to the tomb, she reported that her blindness and paralysis were entirely healed, which stood as proof, she asserted, that her priest had been unjustly removed from his position. The case of Anne Lefranc took the miracles at Saint-Médard and thrust them into the center of this political struggle, and in the process made them something of a sensation and a spectacle that all of Paris began to talk about.

A woman lies on the marble slab at M. de Pâris’s tomb hoping to be miraculously healed, from Wellcome Images, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), as per Wikimedia Commons. — A woman lies on the marble slab at M. de Pâris’s tomb hoping to be miraculously healed, from Wellcome Images, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), as per Wikimedia Commons.

Once again, the debate over what a miracle signified ensued, like trying to decipher the language of God. Of course, anticonstitutionnaires saw it as a sign of God’s favor on not only the woman healed, but by extension the priest she had been praying for, and thus all those priests opposed to Unigenitus who had been wrongfully suspended from their parishes. To them, it was clear; the miracles at Saint-Médard were a message to the rest of the church that they were in error for persecuting Jansenists. On the defensive, the constitutionnaires objected to Jansenists declaring the Lefranc miracle genuine without the proper authority. Conducting their own investigation, Cardinal Fleury and Archbishop Vintimille came to the quite different conclusion that the Lefranc cure was a hoax. Doctors brought in to examine Lefranc declared that her paralysis should never have been called incurable, for it was a “hysterical” condition, related to “menstrual irregularity.” And far from being cured of it, she still afterward had difficulty walking. Moreover, Lefranc’s own brother and mother swore that she had never been blind in one eye. Then, in his written declaration, Archbishop Vintimille implied that a conspiracy was afoot, and that Jansenists had put her up to the charade, coached her, and afterward attempted to authenticate their fraud by soliciting and extorting witnesses. In return, the anticonstitutionnaires called Fleury and Vintimille’s own investigation a fraud, suggesting they had bribed doctors to say what they desired and bullied witnesses into recanting, omitting any testimony that did not fit their narrative. Where the truth lies is hard to discern, but the questions this episode raises remain intriguing.

Could Vintimille’s explanation of Lefranc’s claims actually provide a rational explanation for all of the Jansenist miracles, even as far back as Marguerite Perrier’s healing by the Holy Thorn at Port-Royal? Could the Jansenists have conceived of a scheme to stage miracles in order to bolster their cause? Was it really as simple as paying off or threatening witnesses to get their testimony? And later, realizing that they need not stage them, did they perhaps wait for claims of miracles that they might declare to be proofs of God’s favor for their cause, for whatever reason, even just that a Jansenist had previously ministered to one who later experienced a miracle? If so, how then to explain these miraculous cures that they only exploited after the fact? Vintimille’s assertion that Lefranc’s condition was “hysterical,” while reflecting the misogyny and poor knowledge of physiology of its day, might actually have a valid point. Today, rather than attributing a condition to “hysteria” or anything related to female anatomy or psychology, we would speak of psychogenic or psychosomatic conditions—afflictions without a physical cause that might have more of a psychological cause. Both of Lefranc’s conditions, partial blindness and paralysis, are sometimes known to be neurological symptoms, perhaps caused by a psychological trigger—what psychiatrists today might term a conversion disorder. If such symptoms can be triggered psychologically, it stands to reason that a sudden cure could also be psychologically triggered, and praying at the tomb of a thaumaturge said to perform miraculous healings might be just the suggestive trigger needed. Looking back, most of the Jansenist miracles appear to be the spontaneous healings of conditions that may have been psychological: the partial paralysis of Madame Lafosse in the sacramental procession, the blindness of the 3-year-old healed by Father Celoron, the partial paralysis of the widow that kissed François de Pâris’s feet, and the paralysis and convulsions of Marie-Madeleine Mossaron. And as the army of sick and pious pilgrims arriving at Saint-Médard grew in proportion with the expectation of miracles occurring, did this just increase the chances that people suffering from psychological conditions would show up and then convince themselves that they had been miraculously cured?

A depiction of the cemetery at Saint-Médard overrun with pilgrims, from the book ‘Ceremonies et coutumes Religieuses…’ , by A. Moubach, 1727-1738. Out of copyright.

In a further effort to curb the growth of François de Pâris’s cult so that no further miracles could be exploited by the anticonstitutionnaires, Archbishop Vintimille declared that further observances at Saint-Médard were forbidden. But this did nothing to stop the crowds that every day arrived with the expectation of miracles being performed. And they weren’t disappointed. In just that year, 1731, around 70 miracles were reported and assiduously recorded by Jansenists who wanted to do everything they could to authenticate the miracles taking place there. Some claimed immediate healing, and among these were complaints like blindness, deafness, and paralysis. Other afflictions were diseases or infections or cancers, but their healing was not always immediate, sometimes occurring gradually after their visit to the tomb, which raises the possibility that the illnesses may have simply run their course naturally. Perhaps the most unusual miracles that occurred at Saint-Médard, though, were the countermiracles, or divine punishments that it was believed the thaumaturge François de Pâris meted out to disbelievers and those who came to his tomb determined to fake a miracle and thereby discredit the cult. One woman faked paralysis to mock the supplicants and was actually struck down with a real paralysis. Of course, this too could be explained as a psychological trigger of a conversion disorder, but the result was that she became convert. Thus the numbers of the devoted swelled and swelled, a boon to nearby hotels and cafés, but a worry to the royal government, which responded by posting police around the cemetery. Now this supernatural flap of miraculous healings had become a social powder keg, and before long, it would ignite in the strangest fire imaginable.

The Jansenist Miracles of Enlightenment France, Part One: The Thaumaturges

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